Thoughts on the Refreshments

Remember the Refreshments?

If you weren't paying close enough attention around 1996, maybe you didn't hear their minor alternative (and mainstream?) radio hit, "Banditos." Which name doesn't help remember it: think of "So give your ID card to the border guard/Now your alias says you're Captain Jean-Luc Picard," which helps sum up the novelty band / "ironirock" tag that probably hurt the band too much. Or another, from "Banditos:" "Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people."

So what happened to the Refreshments? I don't even remember if another of their singles made it to mainstream radio. Around that time I listened mostly to the local "alternative" station, KKDM, and the "rock" station oriented toward younger people and harder rock, KLZR - there was little else left in my area. KKDM played "Banditos" a lot of course - that's how novelty hits become so - and KLZR never. I'm sure KKDM still plays "Banditos" occasionally ("classic alternative," or maybe pretty soon it will even be "retro"), KLZR still never. And both probably never played any songs from the Refreshments' third album, The Bottle and Fresh Horses.

So the answer is, I suppose: nothing happened to them. At least in one sense. But why? It's hard to shake apart the differences between loving an album and thinking it's good, but I have strong urges to call Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy (their most popular album, from which "Banditos" came) a very, very good album. Probably The Bottle and Fresh Horses, as well.

So "nothing" happened to a solid band with two good albums. Perhaps part of it is that they came at a bad time. On the surface, their music is much less self-pitying, less emotionally bleak than a lot of the most popular grunge and rock-lumped-in-with-grunge that dominated alternative radio for the few years before 1996. So chalk it up to listeners' (radio, or radio programmers'?) inability to read subtexts, because you don't have to go very deep into most Refreshments songs to find a layer of abjection. In some it's hard to read them as otherwise, as in "Mekong:"

Mekong

Barkeep
Another Mekong please
Yes of course, you can keep the change
A new glass here for this new friend of mine
Forgive me, I forgot your name

Flip a coin
What shall we talk about
Heads I tell the truth
Tails I lie

I came all the way
From Taipai today
Now Bangkok's pouring rain
and I'm going blind again
And I ain't seen my girl
In fifteen thousand miles

Is it true
It's always happy hour here
If it is I'd like to stay a while
And as cliche as it may sound
I'd like to raise another round
And if you bottles empty
Help yourself to mine
Thank you for your time
And here's to life

Barkeep
We need to go around again
One for me and what's his name
My new best friend
Deal me in
And I'll pick my cards up off the floor
I'll see my lucky coin
And raise a pack of lies

Smile to the girl at the door
Another 4 dollar whore
But don't look her in the eyes
She'll break your heart

We came all the way
From Taipai today
Now Bangkok's pissin' rain
And we're going blind again
And I ain't seen my girl
In fifteen thousand miles

Is it true
It's always happy hour here
If it is I'd like to stay a while
And as cliche as it sounds
I'd like to raise another round
And if you bottles empty
Help yourself to mine
Thank you for your time
And here's to life

In this the Refreshments are a lot like Wilco - they play nice music on the surface, but beneath that the outlook is less good. They're also like Wilco, and some other bands in the alt. country movement, in their sense of humor: many songs have a thin verneer of irony laid over them. From the outside, this can be tiring, perhaps. But considering the actual content of most of the songs, irony seems comforting - grinning while biting lip, because it's too painful to do otherwise.

And as for alt. country, the Refreshments are often not grouped with it. Country rock, sometimes. A fan website (everything lives forever on the internet, or at least we can hope) drops the labels "salsa rock" and "desert rock," which seem at least nominally related to alternative country and country rock. Their sound is certainly a lot less innovative than bands fusing country and punk, but the approach to songwriting and lyrical bent are certainly shared: the Refreshments twist around, if ever so slightly, standard southern-rock standards and cliches.

This is not to say that they don't sound genuine. When you consider for a moment that the band is from Tempe, Arizona, and that (for example) the guitar parts and solos sound as if ripped from a gig at any nameless one-horse-town bar (but better than those), and think about what you'd feel like, miserable and living in the desert with nothing to do but drink and let life pass, then it's hard to make sense of it all as anything but genuine.

And when you discover that the band broke up after losing its guitarist, suffering from alcoholism...

From a fan website: "Camper Van Beethoven and the Lemonheads beat up They Might Be Giants behind a 7-11." I don't know about the Lemonheads part, but I don't like They Might Be Giants so that sits fine with me.